The invention relates to segmental bearings which may be either journal bearings or thrust bearings. More particularly, the invention covers an improved shoe assembly for a segmental bearing which includes a novel pivot for pivotally supporting the shoe in the bearing housing.
It is common practice to form the bearing surfaces of large journal bearings and thrust bearings of a plurality of bearing shoes. Each shoe is supported in the bearing housing for limited pivotal movement so that they are automatically aligned by the rotary member to distribute the bearing load evenly over the entire bearing surface. To this end, each shoe is provided with a protruding boss or pivot presenting an arcuate convex surface for engagement with a complementary concave surface formed in the supporting structure. Such construction enables the shoes to rock about the arcuate surfaces for aligning the shoes to accommodate the loading applied by the rotary member.
Such type of bearing construction is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,297,371 issued to Salzman on Jan. 10, 1967 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,026,613 issued to Moravchik on May 31, 1977. Both of these patents show the bearing shoes constructed in accordance with the conventional practice of forming the pivot integrally with the shoe itself so that the arcuate surface presented by the pivot is fixed relative to the bearing surface of the shoe.
It is therefore a general object of the present invention to provide an improved shoe assembly for segmental bearings.
Another object of the invention is to provide a shoe assembly having a removable pivot so that the spacing of the pivot relative to the bearing surface of the shoe can be adjusted to enable the characteristics of the bearing to be varied to meet the desired specifications.
A further object of the present invention to provide an improved shoe assembly for a segmental bearing in which the shoe is capable of aligning itself in any necessary direction to accommodate the loading applied by the rotary member.
Another object of the invention is to provide a segmental journal bearing shoe that is especially compact in its configuration.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide a segmental bearing shoe constructed so as to facilitate its manufacture while improving its operating efficiency.